This is the end, my only friend, the end… ~The Doors
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine… ~REM
In early March, asteroid 2009 DD45 came within 48,000 miles from earth. It was a close call, to say the least. Had this been a baseball game, nobody would have argued if the umpire had yelled ‘Steee-rike!!’
What I find difficult to believe is that we weren’t told of this until the very last minute. The media was informed that DD45 snuck in under the radar, but with the technology we now have, and the advanced tracking system for keeping tabs on these roaming islands in space, I don’t buy that it was a surprise visitor.
In 1908, an asteroid entered the atmosphere above Siberia and exploded overhead, leveling 800 square miles of forest. If this had occurred over a major city, we’d be out a good chunk of skyscraper and taxi drivers.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist exactly, but when common sense and solid evidence trump the outrageous, as in the ludicrous assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated J.F.K., I become interested. So, think about the repercussion if the planet had been told about DD45 months before its arrival, that this asteroid would be skipping by 200,000 miles closer than the moon is to us. There might have been mass pandemonium, and that would have had some impact on national economies and security. Why chance that? It was much easier — and safer — to just inform the world when the asteroid was literally on top of us.
On April 13, 2029, asteroid 99942 Apophis has a chance of colliding into the earth.
Apophis, a serpent god known as ‘the uncreator,’ dwelled in eternal darkness and was the
enemy of Ra. I find it interesting that the projected date is the 13th, and that the first
first three numerals in its identification number are 9’s. It seems worthy of a
Nostradamus prediction.
But what if we don’t make it that far? What if another asteroid hits us first? Worldwide
famine seems a good bet in Vegas. Experts predict that the commercial tuna supply will
disappear within five years, and other food sources are dwindling just as quickly.
I don’t want The End to be something as unspectacular as worldwide starvation or
climate change. I want that asteroid. Or give me an alien invasion. You know, Mayflower
Martians who we unsuspectingly welcome, then they take over. But unlike the
American Indians who helped the Europeans survive those first brutal years, we probably
will knock the aliens off before they get word back to their fellow explorers that there is a
beautiful new place waiting for settlement. We are capable of learning some lessons;
Columbus and his men should never have been allowed to leave the New World alive.
If The End is indeed imminent, how do you believe it will happen, or how would you
prefer to see the final chapter unfold?
Novelist Jim Kalin lives in Los Angeles, writes a monthly column for Amateur Wrestling News, and has traded in his speargun for a banjo. His wife and son sing harmony.